By Jade Jones
Published: February 15th, 2022
We sat down to talk with popular reaction YouTuber and former roadie Tank the Tech (aka Ian Roberts). He has roughly 15 years worth of stories, knowledge, and interesting facts to share! Dive in below.
Photo from Ian's Instagram:(https://instagram.com/tankthetech?utm_medium=copy_link)
Tell us a little about yourself and what you do in terms of the music industry.
I grew up right outside the Chicago, Illinois, USA area and have been in local bads since I was about 14, and even then knew I wanted to work in the music industry. After dropping out of college when I was 18, my band started touring full time, but shortly after, I just wasn't having fun for whatever reason. At the time, we were opening for a pretty well known band on tour, and after sharing my feelings with them, they asked if I'd ever consider working for them if I left my band. Pretty much right after that, I wound up actually quitting my band and took a job touring with them, and really realized I had a lot more fun working for the actual bands than being in one. I started out doing merchandising and lighting, but quickly learned whatever I could and over the past 15 years have worked for many bands doing pyrotechnics, tour management, production, but my main area of expertise for the last 10 years has been guitar, bass, and drum teching. The simplest way I like to explain my job is that I take care of setting up and maintaining all of the artists' gear, so all they have to worry about is walking on stage and performing. Being a retired roadie, what got you interested in being a part of that scene?
To be honest, I never knew I wanted to be a roadie and work for bands until I started doing it. I originally thought I wanted to be IN a band, but realized I loved being behind the scenes and being a part of the team that sets up all the shows. There's a part of me that actually likes being relied upon by a professional musician. I get a kick out of the fact that they trust me and know that everything will be great when they put on a show. The constant travel and seeing new places was always a bonus as well, because I always felt like sort of a nomad and could never sit in one place. Was it difficult making the transition from being in the road to doing YouTube full time?
It really wasn't, but only because it was a necessity. We got sent home in the middle of a tour when the pandemic started, and we had no idea when we'd work again. So I had this voice in my head that said "you HAVE to find something to do", and I gave YouTube a shot and it just worked out. Also, after having been on the road for 15 years, it's kind of nice to actually be home. This is the most time I've ever spent with my wife since we've been together (almost 9 years now), and we just had our first child and I knew I didn't want to miss a minute of that.
---Congrats on the baby, dude!!--- There's been alot of buzz going around about reaction channels. Why do you think they receive so much hate?
From what I've put together from seeing people's negative thoughts about it, it seems like the people that dislike reaction channels feel that way because in their eyes, reaction channels and those content creators are essentially stealing from the artist; using their works to make their own content and financially benefiting from it. Funny thing is, most reaction channels are getting nailed with copyrights claims from publishers, so they're not making anything close to what people probably think they are. But it's starting to change recently. A lot of bands, labels, and publishers are seeing reaction channels as a new form of marketing, so while a lot of people hate on reaction channels, the bands they're trying to defend most likely approve of them.
Whats some of your favorite equipment to work with, and that makes artists sound better live in your experience?
That's actually a difficult question to answer, in terms of the equipment. I've worked on so many different brands of gear over the years that there are a lot of things I enjoy working on. It'd be easier to list the stuff I hate, which is basically any guitar with a Floyd Rose bridge. Haha. As far as artists sounding good on the road, it starts with gear, but in my opinion, it all comes down to your sound engineer, or if a band doesn't have one on tour with them, whoever the house audio engineer is where they're playing. A good sound engineer will make or break a live band. What's the craziest tour you've been on to date?
Craziest tour to date? Oh man... There's probably a couple for different reasons. I did a tour with Van Halen in 2012 that was amazing just for the crew hangs. Because of the routing and the band being older, we never did 2 shows in a row. We'd usually have a show, then 2 or 3 days off in the next city, which gave us a ton of time to hang and get to know each other, and we partied pretty hard on that tour. I did a world tour with Lifehouse in 2015 that was an absolute blast because of experiencing different places and cultures, and we had one specific day off at Oktoberfest in Munich that was absolutely insane. But for the past 6 years, I was touring with a country artist named Dustin Lynch, and in the early days of that gig it was insane. I had never done a country tour before, and I was blown away by how hard country bands party. And I'm not talking like drugs or anything like that, just the amount of alcohol consumed and the afterparties backstage and stuff. I will argue that country bands party harder than any rock or metal band I've ever toured with.
----Motley Crue, Poison and others are shaking in their boots.---- Of recent, we've seen quite a few artists doing collabs and stepping out of their comfort zone in terms of the music they put out. How do you feel about the way the scene will be affected if these things keep happening?
I actually love seeing bands and artists doing new things that are outside their normal sound. We see hip-hop crossing over with country, pop crossing over with metal, and a lot of other cool stuff going on. In my opinion, that's what keeps music interesting. If you're not growing and evolving your sound, and doing things to broaden your horizons, you're just staying the same, and your art will never change. And yeah, I've seen people complain about their favorite bands as they change over time, and they may not like their newer sounds, but I love watching the evolution of bands over time.
Do you have any guilty pleasure songs you find yourself returning to?
This is gonna sound really pretentious, and I don't mean it to, but I don't really have guilty pleasures. I think if you like something and it makes you happy and you enjoy it, you shouldn't feel guilty about it. BUT...there are some things I enjoy that a lot of people would consider guilty pleasures. For example, I absolutely LOVE Nickelback. I think they're one of the greatest rock bands that's ever existed. I also listen to electronic/dance music from time to time, and Scooter has been one of my favorites that I return to over the years. Everyone pegs me as this brutal metal head so I get weird looks when I tell people I also listen to stuff like that, or hip-hop, and anything that doesn't seem like it fits my profile. Haha. Do you feel that the reaction channel scene is too over saturated? Why or why not?
The reaction scene is absolutely over-saturated. We're seeing thousands of new channels every month, and almost everyone is doing the same formula. The successful channels you see are the ones that really stand out and have their own unique content to bring to the table. And a lot of reaction channels die out fast because it's the same cookie cutter content we've seen thousands of times. In the year and a half I've had my channel, I've seen new creators who have come in super hot, uploading videos daily and trying to build a following, only to get frustrated and give up on their channels really fast. All of that being said, I do believe that any reaction channel, regardless of how they operate their content, can be a benefit to bands and record labels. Even if 1 person comes across a reaction channel and discovers a new band they like that they would have never normally heard, that's win for music. What advice would you give to someone seeking a career in music or content creation?
In terms of music, it all depends on what you want to do. If you're looking to create music, the entire landscape is different now from when I was in a band. Back then, you pretty much had to be in a band, tour, record CDs, and get them into people's hands. Nowadays with social media and technology, we're seeing insanely talented musicians that are putting out their own music from their own homes without ever having to join a band. The opportunity for someone to become a well known musician just from uploading stuff online is better now than ever. As far as the music industry, there is a certain aspect of getting lucky and being in the right place at the right time, and just making the right connection. But a good place to start, in my opinion, at least for someone who wants to learn production, is to get some work at a local venue. That way you're learning about gear and working with tons of different bands all of the time. Who knows, one of those bands may really like you and offer to take you on tour. And content creation, at least in my opinion, is kind of a "just go for it" kind of thing. You'll never know if someone will work unless you try it. My advice is to always be yourself and be honest with your audience. Viewers can always tell if you're being genuine, and I credit a lot of my success on YouTube to the fact that I've never tried to be someone I'm not, and I've always treated my viewers like they're someone that I was interacting with in a normal setting. Community is everything online in terms of content creation, and if you're kind to your community, it will be repaid to you 10 times over.
Tank, we thank you for sitting down with us. Be sure to go find Tank on YouTube, give his channel a like/follow, and keep your ears open for his upcoming podcast!